portable-ruby: copy ncurses terminfo into bottle

[Bo98]

This is one step towards fixing irb on Linux not being able to handle left, right or backspace keys.

[Bo98]

Moving some of the discussion here from Slack:

Part two of fixing the issue involves setting TERMINFO_DIRS somewhere, and the question now is where - be it in brew or by patching Ruby. This value to set TERMINFO_DIRS to cannot be baked in at compile time - it must be evaluated at runtime, since it doesn't work well with relative paths.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Part two of fixing the issue involves setting TERMINFO_DIRS somewhere, and the question now is where - be it in brew or by patching Ruby. This value to set TERMINFO_DIRS to cannot be baked in at compile time - it must be evaluated at runtime, since it doesn't work well with relative paths.

The suggestion I liked the most from Slack adding /usr/share/terminfo to the search patch rather than bundling our of terminfo files. I don't feel strongly, though. I think we need to have something merged by e.g. 5pm Scotland time today so this isn't blocking the release of the next Homebrew version.

[Bo98]

Just to summarise the different options here:

• Bundle terminfo and set TERMINFO_DIRS in brew to <portable-ruby-dir>/share/terminfo.

  • Can be done either globally in brew.sh or locally to IRB invokations (dev-cmd and debrew),
  • Is there any concern about this affecting subprocesses?
  • Probably not - especially if there's nothing interactive.
  • Otherwise, making portable-ncurses look for another env like HOMEBREW_TERMINFO_DIRS, which is a simple inreplace, is a way to prevent that
    • (or, alternatively, some sort of Ruby module detour to unset it when not needed but I think that's a bit messy)

• Bundle terminfo and set TERMINFO_DIRS in portable-ruby.

  • This requires hacking the Ruby source.
  • Where exactly?

• Bundle terminfo and patch ncurses to determine the data directory dynamically.

  • Likely bulletproof, but is ultimately still a patch.

• Don't bundle terminfo and pass a configure arg to ncurses to rely on a system installation.

  • The brew Docker image does not currently provide this.
  • Any concerns about version mismatches?
  • Any other locations on various distros beside /usr/share/terminfo?

[MikeMcQuaid]

• Can be done either globally in brew.sh

ruby.sh might make more sense?

• Is there any concern about this affecting subprocesses?

I'd think this is fine 👍. We can also always unset at install time if needed.

• This requires hacking the Ruby source.
• Where exactly?

On the timescale we're on I think this is a 👎

• Likely bulletproof, but is ultimately still a patch.

Gentle 👎 as requiring a patch.

Don't bundle terminfo and pass a configure arg to ncurses to rely on a system installation.

This is my preference.

---

I'd be happy with either "configure arg" or "modify Homebrew/brew" approaches. The latter may be easier to fix if we have any issues cropping up (rebuilding and revisioning portable-ruby is not fun).

[Bo98]

The latter may be easier to fix if we have any issues cropping up

Yeah, I think it's best to play it safe for now.

https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/7718

[MikeMcQuaid]

Works for me, thanks again @Bo98!